Supplier Of Tyson Foods Accused Of Pig Abuse

LITTLE ROCK — An animal rights group on Tuesday alleged cruel treatment of pigs and inhumane conditions at a Wyoming pig breeding facility owned by a supplier for a subsidiary of Arkansas-based Tyson Foods.

Josh Balk, director of corporate policy for the Washington, D.C.-based Humane Society of the United States, also called on Tyson, the world’s largest meat producer, to stop all of its suppliers from using gestation crates, two-by-seven foot cages where pregnant sows are kept from moving freely.

A Tyson spokesman said the company is reviewing its suppliers’ operations and would take appropriate action.

Balk said the use of gestation crates has been banned in eight states, and a number of restaurants, including McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy’s, have announced plans to stop receiving pork from companies that use the cages.

Hormel Foods, based in Austin, Minn., announced earlier this year that it will do away with gestation crates at all company-owned facilities by 2017, and Safeway Inc., the second-largest U.S. grocery chain, announced this week that it would stop using pork suppliers that cage pregnant sows as part of their production process.

Balk said the Humane Society has been asking Tyson since 2005 to end the use of gestation crates.

Balk said his organization filmed inhumane treatment of pigs in April during an undercover investigation on the use of the gestation crate.

The five-minute video, shown to reporters at a news conference here Tuesday, showed workers at the Wyoming Premium Farms in Wheatland, Wyo., kicking live piglets, swinging piglets in circles by their hind legs and striking adults pigs with their feet and fists.

In one case, a pig with a broken leg is heard screaming in pain as a worker sits on it in an effort to get it to move.

Balk said the Humane Society has turned the video over to the sheriff’s office in Platt County, Wyo., and asked for a criminal investigation.

Officers with the Platt County sheriff’s office did not immediately return a call seeking comment Tuesday. Doug Derouchy, general manager of Wyoming Premium Farms, also did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Balk urged Tyson to denounce the animal cruelty and said that “at a minimum, Tyson should eliminate gestation crates in its supply chain.”

Tyson Foods spokesman Worth Sparkman said Tuesday that Tyson does not purchase any hogs from the Wyoming farm for its food-processing plants. However, he confirmed that some aged sows are purchased from Wyoming Premium Farms by Tyson Fresh Meats, a subsidiary of Tyson Foods, and sold to other companies.

Sparkman said Tyson’s business relationship with Wyoming Premium Farms will be reviewed after the Springdale-based company’s office of animal well-being, which is managed by a veterinarian, investigates the animal-abuse allegations.

“Depending on the outcome of that, we will take appropriate action,” he said.

Sparkman said Tyson officials have seen the video, and “we are appalled by the apparent mistreatment of the animals.”

“We do not condone for any reason this kind of mistreatment of animals shown in the video,” he said.

Sparkman said Tyson requires all its hog suppliers to be certified in the pork industry’s Pork Quality Assurance Plus program and that “virtually all of the hogs Tyson buys for our processing plants come from thousands of independent farm families who use both individual and group housing” for their pigs.

In early February, after Hormel Foods announced plans to phase-out gestation crates, Tyson issued a statement saying the company’s shareholders rejected such a proposal in 2009.

Sparkman said Tuesday that Tyson continues to monitor research on individual and group housing for sows and a number of studies have “found they each have advantages and disadvantages.”

He also said the American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Association of Swine Veterinaries have both found that individual and group housing are acceptable and provide the well-being for sows.

“We buy hogs from thousands of independent farm families who use different types of sow housing including individual and group housing, and we currently expect to continue to buy from them,” Sparkman said.